One of my favorite books is Hermania Ibarra’s Working Identities. (Here’s a short video with Ibarra talking about transition.) Ibarra makes the fantastic point that change comes through experimentation. We’d love to imagine that we could sit around in our office or take off on retreat in some beautiful place and just imagine what it is we would really like to be doing, make a plan, and boom- done. The reality is much more messy, Ibarra teaches us. Most of the time when we stumble onto something we’re made to do, we didn’t even know it existed when we started out on our journey but discovered it after taking several steps along the way.
At one point she relates a parable from the work of Elizabeth McKenna about a woman experiencing a terrible situation. She was swimming across a dark lake holding a massive rock with both of her hands. Between kicking and pushing she was able to stay afloat and make some progress at first, but eventually the weight of the rock began to take her under the water. People watching from the shore line shouted to her to let go of the rock. But no matter how hard they chanted, she was unable to let go. Finally, the last time she went under not to return someone heard her say, “I can’t let go, because it’s mine.”
“I can’t let go, because it’s mine.”
So often we carry around these heavy rocks in our lives- hurtful things people did or said to us, disappointments, failures, and so many other wounds. Often, it’s easy to identify someone we can blame for these painful burdens we bear- a villain responsible for our victimization. Indeed, sometimes our identity as victims can become so precious to us it feels like our actual identity, rather than something we’re actually clinging on to that, at least in the story, is quite literally killing us.
What would it be like to open our hands and let some of these rocks go? Who might we be without the stones we consider to be “ours”? I wonder what disabling belief, painful memory, or limiting self-understanding you are holding onto that, if you could let go of, would finally allow you to stop sinking and to swim?
BECAUSE IT’S MINE They saw her-- the woman swimming with the smooth stone held heavy in both hands, kicking and pushing her lonely way through the waters, her head at times falling beneath the dark surface, the rock’s weight dragging her below staying beneath longer each time down. “Drop the rock!” They cried from the shore line sighing each time she went under. Then, finally, struggling she slipped away one last time mouthing, “I can’t. Because it’s mine.”